The population biology of Culaea inconstans, the brook stickleback, in a small prairie lake

1986 ◽  
Vol 64 (8) ◽  
pp. 1709-1717 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Eric E. Moodie

Density, female reproductive effort, diet, and morphology of a population of Culaea inconstans were monitored over a 4-year period. Density varied from near extinction to 2.4 fish/m2. There was evidence that growth and female reproductive effort were inversely correlated with density. Females may spawn every 3 days when food is abundant. Fecundity ranged from 104 eggs per female when density was greatest, to 451 eggs per female the year density was least. The species is capable of large scale prespawning migrations, which may result in an immigrant to resident ratio of 0.5–8:1, depending on resident density. Regular immigration coupled with periodic extinction of populations occupying unstable habitats may account for the apparent lack of local morphological adaptation which seems to characterize this species. Despite substantial variation in density, significant variation in annual growth, and different levels of predation, there was no important variation in gill raker means or the number of dorsal and pelvic spines over the course of the study.

1977 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 398-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. E. E. Moodie

Phenetic traits were compared in 45 Culaea inconstans populations in southern Manitoba. Small body size characterized individuals of populations exposed to potentially predatory fishes. Skewing of the gill-raker distributions was greatest among populations sympatric with Umbra limi, a potential food competitor and predator. These patterns of variation are in some aspects similar to and in others contrast with those found in another stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus. Less fluctuating asymmetry occurred in the pectoral fin rays of stream-dwelling populations than in those of lakes. Care will be required in using fluctuating asymmetry as an indicator of environmental stress.


Author(s):  
Brian Bush ◽  
Laura Vimmerstedt ◽  
Jeff Gonder

Connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technologies could transform the transportation system over the coming decades, but face vehicle and systems engineering challenges, as well as technological, economic, demographic, and regulatory issues. The authors have developed a system dynamics model for generating, analyzing, and screening self-consistent CAV adoption scenarios. Results can support selection of scenarios for subsequent computationally intensive study using higher-resolution models. The potential for and barriers to large-scale adoption of CAVs have been analyzed using preliminary quantitative data and qualitative understandings of system relationships among stakeholders across the breadth of these issues. Although they are based on preliminary data, the results map possibilities for achieving different levels of CAV adoption and system-wide fuel use and demonstrate the interplay of behavioral parameters such as how consumers value their time versus financial parameters such as operating cost. By identifying the range of possibilities, estimating the associated energy and transportation service outcomes, and facilitating screening of scenarios for more detailed analysis, this work could inform transportation planners, researchers, and regulators.


1971 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph S. Nelson ◽  
F. Mervyn Atton

Brook sticklebacks, Culaea inconstans (Kirtland), are known from 20 locations in Alberta and Saskatchewan in which a high proportion of the individuals lack all or part of the pelvic skeleton. These locations are interspersed and surrounded by other locations containing individuals with a normal pelvic skeleton. Individuals which lack the skeleton are of both sexes and are fertile in at least one of the lakes.Considerable variation exists between locations in the proportion of individuals with and without the pelvic skeleton. Morphological intermediates are known from most of the 20 locations and virtually all degrees of pelvic skeleton formation exist between its absence and its full development. Little or no gradation exists, however, in pelvic spine length between their absence and presence. Although the pelvic spines are the first part of the pelvic skeleton to appear during ontogeny, they are present only in intermediates with a virtually complete skeleton base. In addition, many intermediates are highly asymmetrical in their pelvic skeleton while development during the ontogeny of normal individuals is symmetrical.There is a greater tendency for individuals in which the pelvic skeleton is deficient to occur in lakes which lack an outlet rather than to occur in lakes with a permanent outlet. An unusually high proportion of the lakes with these aberrant individuals have been subject to fishery management activities (fish introduction and poisoning), but these disturbances are not causing the loss of the pelvic skeleton.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Rogach Alexander ◽  
Philip Kitcher

Abstract Many recent writers on democracy have lamented its decay and warned of its imminent death. We argue that the concerns are focused at three different levels of democracy. The most fundamental of these, celebrated by Tocqueville and by Dewey, recognizes the interactions and joint deliberations among citizens who seek sympathetic mutual engagement. Such engagement is increasingly rare in large-scale political life. In diagnosing and treating the problems, we recommend returning to the debate between Lippmann and Dewey, in which many of the concerns now prominent were already voiced. This inspires the main work of the paper – the reconstruction of Dewey’s conception of democracy as a ‘mode of associated living’. We focus on the thesis that democracy is educative and explicate Dewey’s notion of growth, showing how democratic education contributes to three important functions: the capacity for sustaining oneself, the enrichment of individual experience, and the ability to enter into cooperative discussions with fellow citizens. Dewey’s conception of democratic education is directed at fostering particular virtues and, if citizens come to possess them, the need for Lippmann’s ‘omnicompetent individual’ vanishes. We conclude by suggesting that Dewey’s project of educating democratic character is pertinent for addressing the disaffection of our times.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 308-325
Author(s):  
Tongda Sun ◽  
Hongdao Meng ◽  
Mingze Zhu ◽  
Xiaoxin Dong ◽  
Naidan Tu ◽  
...  

Objectives: In recent years, the harm of smoking has attracted more and more public attention. Creating a healthy smoke-free environment has been widely favored and supported by the public. Smokeless environment has a certain positive effect on the rehabilitation of dementia patients. Sustained smoking cessation is associated with significantly decreased the future prevalence of dementia. Therefore, hospitals often establish a special organizational structure and management model for tobacco control, and carry out training and assessment for all staff. The nursing group also took it as the basic nursing standard. The 2019 disease pandemic has posed unique health threats to people living with dementia (PLWD). Therefore, a strict smoke-free environment is more necessary for the nursing group. One of the key challenges is scaling up long-term care services to meet the needs of the rapidly growing population of PLWD in developing countries. The aim of the study is to explore the care service needs, utilization and build an essential care service package (ECSP) for PLWD under the disease pandemic in China. Methods: From July 2018 to October 2019, a total of 1255 elderly with dementia in six cities in China by a cluster sampling were investigated with the self-designed questionnaire. Care service needs and utilization for PLWD with different levels of cognitive impairment were summarized. Results: The ECSP for PLWD was composed of 30 service items (7 for core care) in order to guarantee that all PLWD enjoy equal care services, basing on public financing and implementing strategies and taking China's situations into account. The selection plan for ECSP at different levels is designed as 'General Care Services + Selective Care Services ', in which respective service items for low, mid, and high-level care for PLWD are 7+3, 7+6, and 7+10, and requires 151.41 hours, 201.88 hours, and 252.35 hours per month, respectively. Conclusion: The present study provides the first large-scale data on care service needs and utilization for PLWD in mainland China. The ECSP for PLWD based on the needs advanced in the paper was a practicable and effective quantitative management means that deserves a large-scale application. Some safeguard mechanisms and operational implementing pathways of ECSP for PLWD during and after the disease pandemic in China are proposed.


2022 ◽  
Vol 1 (13) ◽  
pp. 80-92
Author(s):  
Nguyễn Mạnh Thiên ◽  
Phạm Đăng Khoa ◽  
Nguyễn Đức Vượng ◽  
Nguyễn Việt Hùng

Tóm tắt—Hiện nay, nhiệm vụ đánh giá an toàn thông tin cho các hệ thống thông tin có ý nghĩa quan trọng trong đảm bảo an toàn thông tin. Đánh giá/khai thác lỗ hổng bảo mật cần được thực hiện thường xuyên và ở nhiều cấp độ khác nhau đối với các hệ thống thông tin. Tuy nhiên, nhiệm vụ này đang gặp nhiều khó khăn trong triển khai diện rộng do thiếu hụt đội ngũ chuyên gia kiểm thử chất lượng ở các cấp độ khác nhau. Trong khuôn khổ bài báo này, chúng tôi trình bày nghiên cứu phát triển Framework có khả năng tự động trinh sát thông tin và tự động lựa chọn các mã để tiến hành khai thác mục tiêu dựa trên công nghệ học tăng cường (Reinforcement Learning). Bên cạnh đó Framework còn có khả năng cập nhật nhanh các phương pháp khai thác lỗ hổng bảo mật mới, hỗ trợ tốt cho các cán bộ phụ trách hệ thống thông tin nhưng không phải là chuyên gia bảo mật có thể tự động đánh giá hệ thống của mình, nhằm giảm thiểu nguy cơ từ các cuộc tấn công mạng. Abstract—Currently, security assessment is one of the most important proplem in information security. Vulnerability assessment/exploitation should be performed regularly with different levels of complexity for each information system. However, this task is facing many difficulties in large-scale deployment due to the lack of experienced testing experts. In this paper, we proposed a Framework that can automatically gather information and automatically select suitable module to exploit the target based on reinforcement learning technology. Furthermore, our framework has intergrated many scanning tools, exploited tools that help pentesters doing their work. It also can be easily updated new vulnerabilities exploit techniques.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (05) ◽  
pp. 9282-9289
Author(s):  
Qingyang Wu ◽  
Lei Li ◽  
Hao Zhou ◽  
Ying Zeng ◽  
Zhou Yu

Many social media news writers are not professionally trained. Therefore, social media platforms have to hire professional editors to adjust amateur headlines to attract more readers. We propose to automate this headline editing process through neural network models to provide more immediate writing support for these social media news writers. To train such a neural headline editing model, we collected a dataset which contains articles with original headlines and professionally edited headlines. However, it is expensive to collect a large number of professionally edited headlines. To solve this low-resource problem, we design an encoder-decoder model which leverages large scale pre-trained language models. We further improve the pre-trained model's quality by introducing a headline generation task as an intermediate task before the headline editing task. Also, we propose Self Importance-Aware (SIA) loss to address the different levels of editing in the dataset by down-weighting the importance of easily classified tokens and sentences. With the help of Pre-training, Adaptation, and SIA, the model learns to generate headlines in the professional editor's style. Experimental results show that our method significantly improves the quality of headline editing comparing against previous methods.


Bibliosphere ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 39-47
Author(s):  
E. B. Artemyeva ◽  
I. G. Lakizo

Both the library education system and Russian education system as a whole undergo a period of large-scale transformations: changing concepts and technologies; revising educational standards of higher and secondary vocational education; developing the system of additional vocational training; forming the electronic educational environment in the practice of teaching students and listeners of the supplementary education system; searching ways for educational institutions and libraries joint development. It is advisable to create information and methodological support of activities in the field of continuous library education in such conditions. The database «Library Education Institutions» generated by SPSTL SB RAS is regarded to be a base of the unified information-educational space in the field of continuous library education, which information should be used to support the educational process of specialized institutions of all levels of education training and forms in the country. It represents the system of library education in the form of a hierarchy of different levels of education, a network of specialized educational institutions in the regions, different types of educational institutions, standard and individual educational curricula, etc. The database main objectives are the following: cumulating information; searching educational institutions, programs; providing statistical information on issues related to education in Russia. A user can create a model of continuous library education in a specific region and organize the work of educational institutions and libraries to improve the librarian professionalism applying the information provided by the database «Library Education Institutions» according to a complex query.


Author(s):  
A. Brychtová ◽  
A. Çöltekin ◽  
V. Pászto

In this study, we first develop a hypothesis that existing quantitative visual complexity measures will overall reflect the level of cartographic generalization, and test this hypothesis. Specifically, to test our hypothesis, we first selected common geovisualization types (i.e., cartographic maps, hybrid maps, satellite images and shaded relief maps) and retrieved examples as provided by Google Maps, OpenStreetMap and SchweizMobil by swisstopo. Selected geovisualizations vary in cartographic design choices, scene contents and different levels of generalization. Following this, we applied one of Rosenholtz et al.’s (2007) visual clutter algorithms to obtain quantitative visual complexity scores for screenshots of the selected maps. We hypothesized that visual complexity should be constant across generalization levels, however, the algorithm suggested that the complexity of small-scale displays (less detailed) is higher than those of large-scale (high detail). We also observed vast differences in visual complexity among maps providers, which we attribute to their varying approaches towards the cartographic design and generalization process. Our efforts will contribute towards creating recommendations as to how the visual complexity algorithms could be optimized for cartographic products, and eventually be utilized as a part of the cartographic design process to assess the visual complexity.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Efi Rousi ◽  
Kai Kornhuber ◽  
Goratz Beobide Arsuaga ◽  
Fei Luo ◽  
Dim Coumou

<p>Persistent summer extremes, such as heatwaves and droughts, can have considerable impacts on nature and societies. There is evidence that weather persistence has increased in Europe over the past decades, in association to changes in atmosphere dynamics, but uncertainties remain and the driving forces are not yet well understood. </p><p>Particularly for Europe, the jet stream may affect surface weather significantly by modulating the North Atlantic storm tracks. Here, we examine the hypothesis that high-latitude warming and decreased westerlies in summer result in more double jets, consisting of two distinct maxima of the zonal wind in the upper troposphere, over the Eurasian sector. Previous work has shown that such double jet states are related to persistent blocking-like circulation in the mid-latitudes. </p><p>We adapt a dynamical perspective of heat extreme trends by looking at large scale circulation and in particular, changes in the zonal mean zonal wind in different levels of the upper troposphere. We define clusters of jet states with the use of Self-Organizing Maps and analyze their characteristics. We find an increase in frequency and persistence of a cluster of double jet states for the period 1979-2019 during July-August (in ERA5 reanalysis data). Those states are linked to increased surface temperature and more frequent heatwaves compared to climatology over western, central, and northern Europe. Significant positive double jet anomalies are found to be dominant in the days preceding and/or coinciding with some of the most intense historical heatwaves in Europe, such as those of 2003 and 2018. A linear regression analysis shows that the increase in frequency and persistence of double jet states may explain part of the strong upward trend in heat extremes over these European regions.</p>


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